


A Healer's Resolve

by ecrituredudesir



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Feet, Foot Fetish, Kidnapping, Murder, Other, Psychological Torture, Tickle torture, Tickling, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 05:34:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14888585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecrituredudesir/pseuds/ecrituredudesir
Summary: A commission for someone on furaffinity.When Maxine is kidnapped by the organization that Susanna works for, she is faced with the moral dilemma of healing their victims so they can be tortured more, or suffer herself.





	A Healer's Resolve

Maxine hadn’t thought it was suspicious at all when a sweet looking Raichu had offered her a “free sample” outside the door of the pokemart on her way through town that day. It hadn’t been any different from any of the other free samples, a pokeberry smoothie blend that had smelled sweet and pleasant, and it was a nice, refreshing drink that she finished off on her way back to her home. Just as she unlocked the door, she started to wobble—then everything went black. Only when she saw the dark edges of her vision start to approach her at a fast pace did she realize that her spinning senses meant that the sample drink had been drugged. When she’d awoken, she’d found herself in strange, cell like room that had little to offer other than a bed of straw on the floor. Though her head was still a little foggy when she awoke, Maxine’s survival instincts kicked in almost immediately, and she could hear rustling from the hallway outside. The Audino moved as quickly as she could, slamming her smaller fist against the first person that entered the room.

She didn’t realize what a mistake that was; the pokemon that stepped into the doorway was massive in comparison to herself. Susanna was a Pangoro with at least two feet on Maxine, who looked in shock as Susanna shrugged off the blow as if it were a branch to brush out of the way. Maxine took a sharp breath, pulling back to try and wind up the strength for another punch—though before she could even land it, Susanna pulled back her hand and landed a slap so heavy against Maxine’s cheek that it staggered the healer. The blow didn’t look as if it’d exerted any strength on the Pangoro’s behalf, but even now, Maxine’s ears were ringing and she was stunned into silence for a moment, her hand reaching out to press against the wall to support herself. Before she could collect her senses, Susanna moved forward to grip the Audino by the scruff of her cloak, pulling her about three inches off of the ground with a show of raw strength.

“You will not try to hit me again.” There was not room for argument or question in her tone, and after managing to get a little nod out of the smaller pokemon, before the Pangoro moved to set her down, taking her wrist in a tight grip before she moved, pulling the Audino out into the hallway and then down a flight of stairs to an even deeper dungeon in whatever hide out that they’d taken her to. She could hear noises from the inside—ones that she didn’t want to think about, and didn’t want to consider what they could be, but it struck the concern inside of her that she felt as a naturally empathetic healer. Even if part of her didn’t want to know what was happening, she wouldn’t be given that luxury, since almost as quickly as she flinched at the sound, Susanna was grabbing the keys from her belt with her spare hand and starting to unlock it.

As Maxine was lead into the room, she was faced with three immediate sights that made her feel sick to her stomach. On one table at an angle, a Meowth had been stretched across a rack, with his ankle cuffed to one side and his wrists cuffed to another. It was clear from the way he was groaning in soft pain, with a thick sheen of what might be sweat making his fur soaked that the rack had already been used to stretch him. He seemed to nearly be delirious with pain, oblivious to the outside world as he struggled to breath in what was likely the first time in several days that he’d been given any kind of time to recover. 

Nearby, a Pachirisu had been cuffed with her hands behind her back, and then her arms contortioned forcibly to hang her by the same bindings keeping her wrists together. She had no room for relief, dangling from the ceiling—though Maxine could see that there were also heavy weights attached to her ankles, and judging from the thick tufts of gray hair hanging down from the Pachirisu’s head, hiding the features of her head lolled to the side, the female was elderly at least. 

Last, but certainly not least, she could see a Ninetails locked in a restraining wooden device, nearly like a miniature version of a stock. Her wrists were cuffed in little holes next to her head, and though she wasn’t forced to stand or hanging from the device, she seemed to be suffering just as much. There was a constant, cycling stream yellowed, dirty water being pumped onto her head from above. Judging from the dark circles under the Ninetail’s eyes, it seemed that they were using the device to keep her awake, and she couldn’t tell how long it had been since the other pokemon had managed to get any sleep. She tried to swallow her disgust, though she could hear other noises of pain and torture coming from rooms deeper in the facility. 

“You will be working here now,” Susanna stated firmly, her dark gaze falling onto the shorter female as she set her jaw. “Heal them, so we don’t have to take breaks to keep them from dying.”

Maxine realized in horror what Susanna was demanding that she do: provide them with a constant flow of torture with no downtime between their victims. She nearly gagged at the thought again, feeling every inch of her morals scream out in protest at even the simple thought. The Audino lifted her head, squaring her jaw as she took in a deep breath…before shaking her head as well. “I won’t do that. I won’t heal them just so you can keep hurting them further.” She murmured, the sign of defiance clear in her eyes as she turned a firm glance up to the Pangoro. The flash of annoyance is clear and immediate on Susanna’s features, but the Pangoro had anticipated that Maxine might put up some resistance. Almost as quickly as she’d been shown the room, Maxine felt heavy iron cuffs slapped around her delicate wrists, and Susanna reached forward and grasped her by the cuffs, dragging her from the torture room only to throw her forcefully into a room that didn’t even have the soft straw material to sleep on. 

Maxine flinched as she hit the ground, the impact enough to make her arm and shoulder ache, though she was quick to scramble ant sit up, looking up just in time to see the Pangoro staring down at her from above. “We’ll give you a few days to reconsider your answer, but you’ll cave one way or another,” she warned, slamming the door behind herself. 

Left alone in the room, the Audino slowly sad up, pressing herself back into the corner of the room while chewing nervously on her lip. The room was dark, and she could barely see any flash of light whenever someone passed by the little slit in the doorway—once, after what felt like hours had passed, someone slipped a little plate of scraps through the slit. It felt like it’d been over a day since she’d eaten anything, and despite the difficulty she found with lifting the cuffs up enough to feed herself, Maxine managed to shove the old-tasting scraps past her lips. Each bite felt like an effort of dragging her hands up then letting the impossibly heavy cuffs fall down to her lap again once she slipped the food past her lips. 

The time between that meal and the next stretched on, hungering lingering in her. The poor Audino was caught between a rock and a hard place; as a healer, it was her moral obligation to help people, to end their suffering and to heal them—not to heal them so their suffering could continue. On the other, she was soft, and terrified of what they Pangoro could threaten her with. The thought of herself being on the stretching rack, or enduring any number of the painful tortures that she was sure she could be subjected to sent a shudder of fear down her spine. Maxine was weak, in a way—she knew that enough pain would break her sturdy will, and that inevitably, she would do anything to make pain and torture stop, even if it meant she would have to go as far as to heal others so they could suffer instead. Unbroken but fearful, she sat through the rest of the next two days living off of the scraps they would toss her, and wondering when her turn would come. 

Finally, on end of the third day, Susanna returned to her cell, staring her down for a moment as the Audino gave as much of a defiant look as she could, though the days of thin food and heavy shackles had worn on her. She was tired, never sure when she’d truly get to rest or not, and not able to sleep comfortably with the heavy shackles on her arms and nothing but her own cloak to duck into to keep warm or sleep on. “I think you could use a little encouragement,” Susanna started, reaching to grip her cuffs with the same roughness as before, hoisting the smaller pokemon up and beginning to drag her out of the room. To the Audino’s relief and somewhat concern, she wasn’t lead to the same torture room that she’d seen the few days prior. That didn’t mean that she was necessarily off of the hook, but the thoughts of what she’d seen in that room had still haunted her for the last few days. Being stretched out on the rack or hung from the joints of her shoulders and wrists had filled her nightmares in her barely-sleeping hours, though to her own horror, she saw that the room did contain something like what the Ninetails had been in. A stocks stood in the middle of the cold, concrete flooring, and she immediately started to pull back, trying to struggle away form Susanna, who wasn’t having any of that. The Pangoro tightened her grip on the cuffs, kicking open the stocks with one foot as she undid one hand from the shackles, trapping it in the stocks, before Maxine’s neck and other hand followed. The Audino was begging quietly, though Susanna ultimately deaf to her pleas. Begging didn’t mean cooperation, it just meant that Maxine knew what was coming and she wanted mercy from it.

Stuck there, in a similar situation to the Ninetails, Susanna moved forward to pull her feet through the bottom of the stocks, pushing up her clothing to show her legs from the knees down, before she bound those in place as well. The position wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t exactly painful, either—though she knew from the way Susanna was still setting up that there was more to come, and that was enough to make her heart feel like a sledgehammer pounding at the inside of her chest cage. She was nervous, she was terrified and the Pangoro could practically feel the fear making her tremble in the stocks she was restrained in. Fear was good for Susanna, it meant she might break easier. 

From her pocket, the Pangoro pulled out a little vial about the size of a laboratory test tube, moving to slowly unscrew the lid. Starting with her left, Susanna reached out to grab Maxine’s foot, tilting it so that she could easy pour a little stream of the strange, sweet smelling liquid over it, rubbing it into the soles of her feet. It felt strange and a little greasy, as if her skin was absorbing the formula and keeping the essence of the liquid there, though it didn’t burn or sting. Confused, the audino’s struggles stilled briefly, her eyes narrowing in concern over what the Pangoro had up her sleeve. Like with the left foot, Susanna took her right foot and continued with the process, leaving the greasy liquid well coated on the soles of her feet before standing straight, screwing back on the cap of the bottle and sliding it back into her pocket. The Audino’s gaze followed every step that she took, biting her lower lip in nervousness as Susanna lifted her phone to her ear after calling a quick number. 

“Yes. Bring them in.” 

It was all that she said before she hung up the phone again, leaving Maxine in the dark as to what she had planned—until a few minutes later, when the door opened again and she could hear the soft clack of hooves on the concrete flooring. Instead of a Miltank or another hooved pokemon, instead she watched as they lead two, normal goats into the room. In confusion, she sent Susanna another glance, but the Pangoro was too busy taking the small ropes they had been lead in on in her fist, holding them at bay for the time being. 

“The oil I’ve put on your feet is an addictive substance that we’ve treated these particular two with in the past. They’ll do anything to keep the taste, and to get more of it. See, their tongues are rough.” She moved her hand, ducking her thumb in the goat’s mouth with the hand that hadn’t slathered on the oil onto Maxine’s feet. The beast was clearly uncomfortable, but he allowed his mouth to be forced open, showing the rough tongue on that particular breed. “So they’ll keep licking your feet, over and over again, until they’re raw. But they aren’t going to stop there—if they do, then I’ll just put more on them. Eventually, they’ll lick through the skin until they hit blood and muscle. These two have been known to go all the way down to bone,” she noted, finally offering Maxine a very trace hint of a smirk. “Do you understand?” 

Maxine had gone pale. Of all the terrible, slow tortures that she thought that the other would put her through, all of the movie stereotype medieval agonies, this had not been something she’d thought possible. “No. Wait, that’s- please-“ Maxine started, though before she could even finish trying to make her case, Susanna let the goats free. Immediately they sought out the source of the scent they were all too familiar with, and it started. Their rough tongues started where the greasy oil was nearly dripping from the heel of her foot, and began to lick upwards in slow, insistent laps. The audino went shock straight, biting back on her lip before she couldn’t hold it back anymore—and she started to laugh. 

It wasn’t a pleasant, relaxed or enjoyable laugh though. It seemed the rough tongues were so ridiculously ticklish to her that the noises started impulsively, not giving her a chance to breathe in, prepare herself, or do anything other than choke out the muffled sounds of each laugh being forced from her lungs faster than she could inhale. For Susanna, this was a normal reaction at first. She would see them laugh bitterly as the goats licked at the souls of each person’s feet that withstood this particular torture until those laughs turned to agonized cries as the skin began to wear off, and then screams as raw nerves started to be exposed. It wasn’t one of her favorite methods, but she understood the necessity of it. They couldn’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs—or in this case, feet. 

For Maxine, the next few minutes started to feel like hours, and then days. Her brain started to drift, unable to focus on anything other than the intense, ticklish feeling of the warm, wet tongues trailing their way up both of her feet, sometimes at once, sometimes trading off as one goat would find something interesting on the other foot scent wise, or they would break the pattern and start all over again. Her lungs burned. Each desperate gasp she took felt shorter than the last, as if the very act of laughing would asphyxiate her, and every time she tried to pull back, she would hit her ankles on the secured bindings holding her, or bash her wrists on the inside of the wooden stocks. She was struggling as best as she could until her neck ached from pulling back or hitting the sides of the stocks with her uncontrollable slight convulsions from laughing.   
However, as the minutes began to pass and Susanna watched on as the laughter continued rather than any signs of pain, Susanna began to grow suspicious. She didn’t think there was anything the Audino could have done to manage to lessen the torture, though by now, most prisoners would have cracked into signs of severe pain rather than still echoing her squeals of laughter through the room. She imagined it was probably quite the psychological torture for the other victims to hear; instead of screams, they would just hear the pleasant healer they’d seen yesterday, with her laughing echoing through the cold, dark halls. 

“Please!” Maxine gasped, barely able to speak through the assault on the soles on her feet, and there was moisture welling at the corners of her eyes—she had been pushed so far into the force of laughter that she was on the verge of tears, and there was desperation in her expression. “Please- ahaha- no, no- haa!! Haha-no more!” 

Susanna’s eyes narrowed, trying to discern if the Audino was faking her begging, before she realized that the healer Pokemon likely had much thicker skin than most—quite literally. Added with her faster regeneration time, it suddenly became much more obvious why she wasn’t suffering yet. She was healing through any damage that the goats would be able to do to her just as they were doing it, never making it past the first layer of her skin—though from the way that Maxine was still desperately begging, the Pangoro saw no problem in letting the torment continue. Though it wasn’t causing pain, tickling to an extreme was also a very viable form of psychological torment as far as she saw it, so with a shrug, she took a step back and let it continue. Crossing her arms, Susanna stepped back and only offered Maxine a half-smirk. “You know how to make it stop.”

Not willing to crack just yet, Maxine gave a little sob, though it was choked by a laughing hiccup that kept her from answering or begging any further. She was on the verge of exhaustion though she was still desperately trying to breathe and inhale as much as she could. It proved to have only marginal success, and the Audino was nearly delirious by the time she finally choked out: “Okay!” Another exhausted laugh, her throat dry and in need of some kind of water to parch the fact that her lungs felt like a desert from overuse, and she hadn’t had a drink with any of her meals for the last couple of days. She was dehydrated, and her will was cracked, finally. “Okay,” she wheezed again, looking up in weariness as the Pangoro moved forward to finally pull the goats off of her, leaving her panting quietly for air now that she could get some in without her lungs contracting with the force of her laughter. “I’ll… I’ll do it. I’ll help.” 

It was clear that Maxine was humiliated with herself for agreeing to help the organization, especially when her conscience was crying out in protest at the very thought of it, no matter how much torment she had endured thus far. Grabbing the rope that pulled both goats further back, Susanna gave another little, subtle smirk to herself before opening the door and handing the two animals back over to the same person who had brought them in—from what Maxine could see, it was the same Raichu that had drugged her. The Audino only breathed easy once they were both out of sight and gone from the room, and then Susanna returned to free her from the stocks and the bindings on her ankles. She didn’t replace the heavy cuffs that had left her wrists a little chaffed after three days, even though the goats hadn’t done anything to the soles of her feet in nearly an hour. 

Though she didn’t necessarily feel like she deserved it after what she’d just agreed to, Maxine took a few moments to catch her breath, and finally, after days of nothing, Susanna handed her a water bottle. It wasn’t cold, but she didn’t care—the Audino started gulping it down the minute she got it, desperate to get fluids into her system. She knew it was a ‘reward’ for her agreement, and she hated the way Susanna looked down at her, as if she had expected this all along—no matter how long it’d taken Maxine to crack or not. “Welcome to the team then, healer.” Susanna noted quietly, and Maxine lowered her gaze in shame. 

She was expected to begin immediately, that much was obvious. There was no leeway in her getting to go back to her cell to think about her decision; they didn’t need her recovering and then changing her mind, after all, because that would just be a waste of the time they’d put into torturing her. Susanna wanted to get her working while that feeling and sensation was still fresh in her, the fear of not being able to breathe, laughing so hard until she had been exhausted and her muscles had been screaming for relief from that torment. She wasn’t looking forward to what was to come, though before she could get too acquainted with the freedom of not being restrained, Susanna was grabbing her by the back of her cloak and dragging her along down the hallway, away from her cell and away to another nearby room. It wasn’t the torture room, which she could only be grateful for. 

Unfortunately, the scene that she was presented with felt much worse than the one she’d seen in the torture room. It was the same Meowth as before, though she could tell that he’d had a much worse experience than she had over the few days of scraps and cuffs on her wrists. His extremities were swollen, like there was severe damage done to his wrists, elbows, shoulders, ankles, and knees. He had been stretched past his limits, and he seemed on the bare verge of consciousness. Though she knew she could heal him back to consciousness, there was no way that he would be able to walk or use his arms regularly again. Stepping closer, she could tell that there was extreme muscle and joint damage to his arms, and fortunately he was completely out of it when Susanna stepped forward and lifted one of his arms. Maxine’s eyes widened briefly in horror as, like a ragdoll, his abused arm bent in the wrong direction. 

She felt the water in her stomach wanting to come back up, seeing the clearly contorted, destroyed limbs of the poor pokemon, and Susanna let the limp limb drop back from her hand to the table he’d been laid out on. A careful look to Maxine, as if to give a wordless threat that the possible was same to do to her, and the Pangoro straightened her back. “Fix him. Make it to where he’s conscious. We have the adrenaline to keep him awake once you heal him back from where he’s at now.” 

Maxine fell silent, trying to get her nerves under control so she could focus. There were dozens of thoughts running through her mind, a mile a minute, and finally she just steeled her shoulders, her body language stiff as she seemingly acknowledged the fact that she had no other option but to obey the command to save his life—only for the tormenters to drag it on in the worst way. Maxine took a deep breath, before glancing to the Pangoro. “I need some privacy to concentrate.”

With some skepticism, Susanna looked her over, as if to try and gauge if she was going to try to run or get a weapon to use against her, but from what she could tell, Maxine looked broken and resigned to her position. Satisfied with this, she crossed her arms, moving back towards the door. “I’ll be waiting outside. Call me when you’ve finished,” she instructed, waiting until Maxine answered with a subtle little nod, wordless in her resignation.

For the next hour or so, there came no sound from within the room. She could only assume that the Audino was hard at work in the room, and Susanna was rather convinced that she’d managed to scare Maxine into cooperating with them for the foreseeable future. There was only so much torture that one person could take before they snapped, and she’d seen the pushing point flash in Maxine’s eyes before she’d pulled those goats away. After the duration of that hour was over, Susanna started to wonder just how long the process was going to take—though before she could question it herself further, one of her men, a grizzly, scarred looking Nidoking approached from the torture room down the hallway, looking a little confused. He didn’t expect that Susanna would be standing there, since the healer head been so stubborn on the first day about not hurting anyone. 

“Did the healer agree?”

“She did,” the Pangoro answered, her arms crossed as she leaned back against the frame of the door, hearing no noises from inside—but she didn’t expect to hear anything, either. The Meowth had been unconscious, and healing wasn’t exactly a very loud job. 

“Can I see if he’s awake enough to put back on the rack now, then?” The Nidoking questioned, looking somewhat impatient to resume his work. Out of all of them, he had been the most adamant of getting information out of the Meowth, since his other two current guests had much more passive forms of torment. He was sadistic, sure, but he was also good at his job. 

“We’ll check,” Susanna answered, moving to open the door once more—only to stare in shock at the side of Maxine sitting a few feet from the Meowth, who wasn’t breathing any longer. Susanna knew that she hadn’t left him in such poor condition that he would have died from his wounds so quickly, so the only answer to his state was clear: in order to avoid healing him so that he could suffer more, the Audino must have taken it upon herself to end his suffering and save him from further torment. She could see no other way that the Meowth could have suddenly died, and for a moment, there was a little twitch in the corner of her eye.

“Did you kill him?” Susanna asked, terrifyingly slowly. The Nidoking that had followed her in went tense; he could tell that there was anger starting to rise in her tone. When Susanna’s temper rose, people tended to get broken, and he didn’t want to be within an easy reaching range to be the primary victim of her rage should she fly into one. 

“No,” Maxine answered, looking up and staring her dead in the eye, and even the Pangoro had a hard time trying to find a lie in her gaze. “There was just nothing that I could do for him. Take me to the next patient, I’m ready to keep working.” There was a slight command in her tone, as if she’d found her bravery in the hour that she’d been locked in the room, even if she’d just withstood the worst mental torment she’d ever had in her life. 

Susanna’s paws curled into a fist, and her lip started to curl in anger. The Nidoking took a step back, half expecting for her to step into the room and tear the smaller Audino apart, limb from limb. He would still prefer it be the Audino rather than himself, but he didn’t dare speak up about what had happened to the prisoner, expecting Susanna to punish Maxine accordingly for deriving them of what could have been an excellent source of information. Instead, all at once and without warning, the anger seemed to dissipate from Susanna’s features, and with a jaw-clenched, tight sigh, she looked back to him. “Tell Jason to take her back to her house. She’s useless to us. Get her out of my sight.”

In Maxine’s clear defiance, a stubborn willingness to outright kill someone rather than listen to the orders to prolong their suffering, Susanna had seen just a bit of herself reflected back in those staring eyes, absolute in their intention to deliver the Meowth from their hands just to keep him from going back onto that rack. The Audino’s stubborn beliefs had driven her to do something that many wouldn’t understand—but Susanna saw the healer’s reasoning. The Meowth would have been killed eventually no matter what she did, so Maxine had just ended his suffering early. Jaw nearly dropping, the Nidoking could only nod numbly in disbelief that Susanna was actually letting someone go after defying her. He wouldn’t be the one to question it though, and as he ducked to disappear back down the hall, Susanna scowled once more and turned to leave herself. 

After a moment, the Raichu she’d seen before, the same one that had drugged her, appeared in the doorway, looking somewhat impressed. It wasn’t every day that someone managed to convince Susanna to let them go, much less without beating them senseless first. Maxine was blindfolded before eventually being led back to her home, deposited on her doorstep by the Raichu with a firm warning to never speak of anything that had happened, to anyone. 

Maxine was shaken still, as she fished out her spare key to her home and unlocked it, unable to shake the feeling that she was guilty, despite what she’d done to help the Meowth. Even if she had blood on her hands from the incident, she didn’t plan on staying quiet about it for long.


End file.
